Field of Invention
Various embodiments of the present disclosure relate to a medical appliance, and more particularly, to an integrated target structure for generating charged particles and a driving method of a medical appliance using the same.
Description of Related Art
Generally, modern people living in a complicated society have been difficult to maintain good health due to a lot of stress, irregular meals, etc. In particular, modern people are highly likely to die of a malignant tumor, that is, a cancer or a tumor. The incidence of cancer tends to be increased in society and therefore national measures have been urgently required. Therefore, cancer treatments are becoming the center of attention.
As the cancer treatments, there are various treatments such as radiotherapy, a surgical operation, chemotherapy, magnetic field treatment, and thermotherapy.
In particular, the cancer treatment using radiation has been the most widely used along with the surgical operation and the chemotherapy. As the cancer treatment using radiation, there are various treatments such as X-ray therapy, electron beam therapy, and charged particle treatment (or proton beam therapy).
The X-ray therapy is the cheapest treatment that may be implemented using a simple apparatus and has been the most commonly used among the cancer treatments using radiation. Further, the electron beam therapy has been settled in earnest as one of the cancer treatments using radiation by realizing the miniaturization of an electron accelerator in 1980's. However, the X-ray treatment and the electron beam treatment breaks hydrogen bonds in cancer cells to destruct DNAs of the cancer cells and involves a side effect of damaging healthy cells present on a traveling path of beam. Therefore, as a method for decreasing a radiation exposure to normal cells, technologies of intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT), tomography, a cyber knife, etc., have been developed, but do not completely resolve the foregoing side effect.
The charged particle treatment may selectively and locally treat a cancer and therefore has been in limelight as patent-friendly treatment.
An ion beam therapeutic apparatus needs a sufficient space (more than three-story building) for an accelerator (cyclotron or synchrotron), a gantry, radiation shielding facilities, etc., and a lot of installation cost. Further, a lot of manpower and cost are required to maintain the ion beam therapeutic apparatus.
The laser beam therapeutic apparatus for the charged particle treatment needs a narrower installation space (for example, 1/10) and lower maintenance cost than the foregoing ion beam therapeutic apparatus. However, the existing laser beam therapeutic apparatus needs to separately install targets and optical components for generating charged particles and therefore is difficult to cope with patient characteristics.